Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

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Tag Archives: 2006

Marie Antoinette (2006)

15 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on June 11, 2013

Just eat cakes! Who cares if she said it or not!

If you were the one who fell asleep during “the French portion” of World History Class, don’t worry; this movie has you covered. Kirsten Dunst plays the Archduchess of Austria and soon-to-be Queen of France from her beginning days where her and her husband, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) struggle to bang and get pregnant, to the latter where she had a whole country demanding her head. Funny how time changes, isn’t it?

Even though I know the song about her, and I know the (untrue) statement she apparently made, I still know a lot about Marie Antoinette; who she was, what she did, and all of the other background shizz about her. No, it’s not that I’m some weird dude who enjoys looking up historical figures, it’s mainly because the class I’m taking now for college, just got done covering her, France at the time, and the aftermath. So, yeah, basically: I know my shit.

Apparently, by the looks of it, Sofia Coppola doesn’t. There were plenty of times in this flick where I wanted to slap her, or slap something by all of the historical inaccuracies here, solely for the fact that it probably would have helped the film. I get that Coppola couldn’t be any less concerned with the nitty-bitty details of M-A’s life, but when you have a movie that’s focusing on making her a sympathetic/real person; you need to have all of those details in there and not simply make random shit up. I don’t mind when a movie does that just for shits and gigs, but it didn’t feel right here. It felt like Coppola tried to do whatever she could to keep this movie fun, entertaining, and interesting, but even taking liberties with the story didn’t seem to help either. Something else was going on here that I still need to put my finger on.

Ehh, I’ve seen bigger and more lush!

Coppola has that certain style to her directing and writing that works wonders, and other times; totally misses the mark. Here’s one of the latter-instances. Coppola is a gifted-filmmaker in the way that she is able to tell a story and an emotion, not just through having the characters say something, but by giving us a visual or a single-shot that convey whatever it is that she wants to convey. She’s one of the very-rare filmmakers that can do that now, and actually get away with it without being labeled as “pretentious”, “snobby”, or “an artsy-farsty mofo”. However, it doesn’t aid in her in anyway here, and makes the story seem duller instead.

For instance, there are plenty of scenes where it seems as if Coppola didn’t really seem to worry too much about the story, and decided to focus on what made the movie look pretty. It works, that’s for sure, but it does seem like over-kill and a bit of a waste, considering that this is a 2 hour film, that’s primarily dedicated to shots of Dunst playing in the grass and looking happy. Once again, doesn’t matter if you want to pull off a good shot once or twice, but when it starts to take over the rest of the movie and get rid of the substance, then it gets dull. Very, very dull.

But I can’t talk too much crap on Coppola and her visuals, because she does a hell of a great job with them. Not only is this movie beautiful from head-to-toe, but it’s also very impressive by all that it was able to capture on film. Apparently Coppola was actually able to film in and out of the actual Versailles, which is an opportunity that Coppola does not take for granted, considering she makes us feel as if we really are with all of these high-class, royal S.O.B’s, and watching them as they party, drink, smoke, have sex, fondle, and play games as if they were at a P. Diddy party.

Oh, and they are all doing it to the sweet tunes of whatever the hell Coppola had on her iPod at the time of filming. In the beginning of the flick, we get a bits and pieces of actual, alternative-rock songs playing somewhere in the background, but for the most part; Coppola keeps it cool with the anachronisms. Then, out of nowhere, Coppola seems to have had enough with 18th Century ways, and decides to unleash what she’s got ringing in her ears, and it’s all thanks to that Bow Wow Wow song that you’ve heard a million times (and done better by this guy, by the way). After this track comes seemingly out of nowhere, then Coppola goes ball to the walls with any punk rock/alt. rock song in the history of man that she can find, and it works more than it doesn’t, because it actually glues you into the party-atmosphere that these snobs seem to be reveling in. Goes to show you that Tarantino and Luhrmann aren’t alone when it comes to using songs randomly, but perfectly to fit a tone.

The fact that Coppola was able to make this story more centered towards M-A, what she went through, how she got through it, and all of the problems she had to overcome, worked in most areas, but didn’t in others. The areas that it did work in were all thanks to Kirsten Dunst as M-A because she gives not only a great performance that shows her being young, nimble, wild, and free to do whatever she wants and (sort of) get away with it, but it’s also a very subtle one in the way that she’s able to convey so many feelings this lady must have been going through in real-life. The fact that M-A was so young when she got married, was forced to get pregnant, and basically thrown on the throne as queen is something that makes you think about how she got over all of it, but also makes you feel for her a bit, the same way you would want someone to feel for you, had you been thrown into the same situation. This part of the character is where Dunst works best in and once the movie decides to drop the champagne, the cakes, and the sex-games, then that’s when Dunst decides to take herself a bit seriously and you see a young girl who has seemingly come into her own. However, as we all know: it was too little, too late for her.

“Not tonight, honey. Maybe next year.”

In a role that seemed more like an in-joke, rather than anything worth even taking seriously, Jason Schwartzman does fine with what he has to do as Louis XVI, but the movie isn’t all that bothered with him or his character. The whole first-half of the movie is practically dedicated to him just being a pansy, not being able to make love to his wife, and knocking her up. Once that’s all said and done with, then the guy is shown as a pansy who can’t keep his wife satisfied and basically allows for her to stay at these parties where she (presumably) bangs other dudes. Don’t know how much of that is actually true, but from what I’m able to gather: Louis XVI was a bit of a wimp.

The rest of the cast is fine and seem like they had a great time going on the set for a little play-date they liked to call dress-up. Rip Torn plays the philandering king to perfection because he’s grimy as you could imagine; Asia Argento loves scumming it up as the whore that the king is philandering with; Judy Davis does her usual, weird-face thingy that we all know her for; and Steve Coogan is here as well, but not really doing anything funny. When you have “The Coogs” in a movie, I don’t care what it is: you have to make him do or say something in the least-bit funny. Without any of that, what’s the point of even having him around in the first-place? Just for show? Baloney!

Consensus: Coppola’s style and vision slows the feel and pace of Marie Antoinette down, especially when it doesn’t need to, but at least it’s still left to be seen with it’s beautiful look, desired-attention to the finer-details (talking about the set-pieces, not the actual story), and fine performance from Dunst in the lead role, that showed that she was maturing more and more by the roles she began to take.

5.5 / 10 = Rental!!

"One day, you're going to grow up to be a royal, pain-in-the-ass, just like your mother was."

“One day, you’re going to grow up to be a royal, pain-in-the-ass, who wasted all of her country’s money on lavish parties to satisfy your boredom.”

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2000s, 5-5.5/10, Movies 2006, Asia Argento, Aurore Clément, Baz Luhrmann, Clementine Poidatz, Danny Huston, David Walliams, Guillaume Gallienne, Jamie Dornan, Jason Schwartzman, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Judy Davis, Kirsten Dunst, Marianne Faithfull, Marie Antoinette, Mary Nighy, Mathieu Amalric, Molly Shannon, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Quentin Tarantino, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Sebastian Armesto, Shirley Henderson, Sofia Coppola, Steve Coogan, Tom Hardy

Lady in the Water (2006)

31 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on May 29, 2013

I wish there were mystical, sexy-ish creatures swimming around in my pool after closing time. Instead, it’s just me and my drunk friends.

This part may be a little hard to talk about, but hell, I’ll give it a try. Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) works at the Cove apartment complex and does whatever he can to get by throughout the day. He cleans bathrooms, kills bugs, changes light-bulbs, does everything really, but he never seems happy. All of that somehow changes when the mysterious creature Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), shows up in his pool saying that she needs to go back to land. She tries to, but finds out that a scary monster is there to attack her, and it’s up to Cleveland and the rest of the tenants to fight back and help Story get back to her home-land and hopefully, tell her story.

We all know that M. Night is a story-teller and loves to give us somewhat strange, wacky tales that can only occur in his mind, and his mind alone, but this is where I think people started to grow impatient with the dude. The Village was a bit of the last-straw, but I think more people were apologetic on that one because it had some good features to it. If not, and it’s only me who feels that way, so be it because I will go-to-bat for the dude anytime of the day, night, or week. But this is where things started to not only change for me, but for plenty others as well. And it hasn’t been pretty since.

It’s obvious that M. Night is making this story so that kids will want to go with their families and see all of the wonderful, wildness that M. has to bring to this slightly-original fable, but I highly doubt that’s what came out here. Yes, it is a fairy-tell that captures the wonder and imagination of a kids mind, but it also seems too confusing in terms of what it’s trying to say, where it’s trying to go, and how freakin’ pretentious it is. It’s been said that M. Night is a bit of a cocky dude who feels as if he can do wrong (just watch some of his movies and you might just see differently), and I’ve always put my hand of separation between me and those nay-sayers, but now I can totally see where they are coming from. The dude thinks he’s the shit, and if I’m not just talking about his story, I’m also talking about the character he plays here.

If you’re going to throw a banger, the pool has to at least big 3x bigger than that kiddie-shit!

Instead of having himself play a small-role, or even a cameo like he usually does, M. gives himself a character that is not only one of the biggest parts of the whole movie, but probably the most important since his character is a writer, who’s future piece-of-work is supposed to inspire and influence generations and generations to come. A bit self-indulgent? You think!??! And hell, it wouldn’t been half-bad if the dude could have backed it all up with some nice acting, but the dude seriously can’t act for shit in this movie. His character is supposed to be pretentious and cocky, but instead, he just comes off like a whiny-ass that always comes to Cleveland whenever he needs a light-bulb fixed, his rug washed, or house ram-sacked so that people can see what he’s up to.

However, M.’s problem with his character is the same problem that everybody else in this movie seems to be having as well. God bless Giamatti, but the dude really seems to be phoning it in here. And that’s not just his fault, but more of the character’s and how M. writes him as being. We first see this Cleveland dude as an obviously sad, lonely, and depressed dude that has a stutter, so why the hell would he all of a sudden help out, let alone, actually believe this mystical creature as a thing from a different world? Oh, I don’t know, maybe cause he’s had a tragedy bestowed upon him that’s only brought up once? Yeah, maybe that’s it. Regardless of what the real reason was, I didn’t care, I didn’t understand, and I felt bad for Giamatti as it seems like he got roped into doing this, just so he could work with “that guy who did the Sixth Sense.”

Somehow, I feel that’s why anybody still works with the dude, even until this day.

Everybody else suffers from the same problems that Giamatti does as well. Jeffrey Wright’s character is the type of dude that seems to know almost anything and everything about the English language, just through doing a whole bunch of crossword puzzles, and yet, we are actually supposed to believe that the fate in humanity rests in his hands, as well as his own kid’s, who reads cereal boxes all day. Yup, believe that for sure! But the list of characters go on and on and on, almost to the point of where you stop feeling bad for M., not realizing that he’s losing all control, but for the obviously, very-talented people involved with this movie.

People like Freddy Rodriguez, Jared Harris, and Sarita Choudhury are all here, and trying to do whatever the hell it is that they can, but all fall fate to M. Night’s crappy-writing. He tries to make these characters funny with their own little quirks here and there, but none of it even comes together for the finale to make sense, nor does it ever come together to make us laugh. The movie tries whatever it can to do both of those things (laugh and make sense), but fails miserably and it’s all because of M. Night. The dude may know how to make a shot interesting and make any type of atmosphere as every-bit of tense and eerie, but he can’t write snappy-dialogue, unless the actors/actresses are up to it. I don’t know if everybody was up to it here, but something did not mix so well.

He’s got the whole world of this chick’s life, in his hands….

The only person I can say who wasn’t involved with any of the shit-talking I was doing up there is Bryce Dallas Howard as Story, and the only reason I don’t include here is because her character is so dry (funny, because she’s the lady in the WATER), so dull, and so boring, that you don’t ever understand what makes her such a wonderful creature to save, let alone, go nuts for. I get it, she’s almost like a mermaid and has mystical powers, but does that mean we too are supposed to give two shits about her character and how her fate rests in these num-skulls’ hands? Hell to the no! Obviously M. Night cares, but we can’t share the same feelings, which is probably how most people have been feeling for the longest time when it comes to them and the dude.

Poor guy. He’s from Philly, he likes his twist-endings, and he’s got a great name that’s easy to make jokes about, but he just can’t seem to win nowadays.

Consensus: The Lady in the Water is a self-indulgent mess that finds M. Night at his most cocky and arrogant, for the sole-purpose that he thinks everything he’s doing is right, smart, and makes sense, but doesn’t care too realize that he might, just might, be going a tad over-board with the ideas and turns his story takes, as obvious as they are.

2 / 10 = Crapola!!

Go on, Paul. Take a dip. You deserve it buddy.

2-2.5/10, 2000s, Movies 2006, Bill Irwin, Bob Balaban, Bryce Dallas Howard, Cindy Cheung, Ethan Cohn, Freddy Rodriguez, Jared Harris, Jeffrey Wright, June Kyoko Lu, Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan, Mary Beth Hurt, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Noah Gray-Cabey, Paul Giamatti, Sarita Choudhury, The Sixth Sense, Tom Mardirosian, Tovah Feldshuh

The Illusionist (2006)

23 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on February 26, 2013

Sorry, ladies. Leave the magic tricks to the men.

When word of famed-magician Eisenheim’s (Edward Norton) astounding illusions reaches the powerful and pragmatic Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), the egotistical-ruler attends one of the magician’s shows in order to debunk Eisenheim during the performance. However, when the Prince’s intended, Sophie von Teschen (Jessica Biel), assists the magician on-stage, a dormant love affair is rekindled. That’s where Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) steps-in to clear the air and find out just what the hell is going on here.

Back in the golden days of 2006, there was not one, but TWO movies made about 20th century magicians (the second-one being Christopher Nolan’s far-better The Prestige). Apparently, David Blaine or Criss Angel just weren’t cutting it for the movie-going audiences and they needed more magic, more illusions, and more bullshit! And even though Neil Burger is nowhere near the type of director Nolan is, and probably forever will be, at least the guy keeps us believing in that everything we see is real, no matter how much CG they may use. Oh, it’s actually fictionalized-tale? Could have fooled me. NOT!!

All kidding aside, the guy, Burger as I could probably assume he loves to be called, actually does a fine job with this material because he is able to not only keep us wondering just what the hell is going on here, but where this story is going to end-up lastly. It’s not easy to see the twists and turns coming and that’s where the fun of Burger’s direction seems to lie: the element of playing with his audience’s minds and expectations, much like the illusionist this story is all about. However, maybe I’am a bit biased in my own way and found more to reach for than mostly other-viewers.

On the next episode of Whisker Wars: The 20th Century Version....

On the next episode of Whisker Wars: The Royal Days….

I have to say, I love movies about con-men and in a way, magicians are sort of shoved into the same category as them. Therefore, fore me, watching as this magician would pull-off tricks and illusions to play with the minds of everybody who cared to go out and see him, really interested me and had me wonder just where exactly Burger was going to go with this story. Some places he takes you; you expect, whereas others; you don’t. All you do know is that Burger seems to have a fiery-passion for this material and it shines through in every, which way. Also, make sure to pay close-attention to all that’s going on here because it may just help you in the end. That’s the only piece of advice I’m giving away, and it’s all for free. Sadly.

Then again, the fact that Burger loves this material so much, you know, magicians playing tricks on each other, you sort of start to lose reality of what this story is actually about: a love between two people that can’t be together. It’s the age-old story of two kids that knew each other when they were young, fell in love, had their first, awkward kiss together (trust me, there’s plenty more where that came from you youngsters), and vowed to always be together, until they eventually are separated by two walks of life and class-situations. To be honest, there isn’t anything wrong with the story here, it just doesn’t get as much as love and dedication as the whole mystery does. It’s obvious that maybe Burger needed a little som-som to back-up all of his fun and games, but it doesn’t work or even have you give a lick about the forbidden-love between these two. You sort of just want them to bone, get it over with, and shut-up about the whole thing and move on with their lives. That would have been a lot more entertaining to watch then a bunch of people just moping and pissing around about how they can’t be with the one they love. I love Scarlett Johansson, but you don’t see me bitchin’ about that every, damn day, now do ya?!??! Didn’t think so. Get over it!

Half of the problem that I had with this plot-line, also had to do with the fact that Jessica Biel can’t act for shit, and when she tries too hard: this is what we end-up getting. Not a good thing to witness at all. Every movie I see this gal in, I always want her to blow me away, show me something more from her that I never, ever thought she had, and just make me believe in her once again as an actress (I don’t know when the first time was), but she just can’t pull that off here, no matter how meaty the material may be. Around all of these heavy-weights, she sort of sticks out like a sore-thumb and it’s very, very noticeable. I can’t even blame Burger either, because every obvious and predictable line this flick they throw at her, she hits it as if she was in a day-time soap, or better yet, still on another episode of 7th Heaven. Now, I think is the time to fully give-up on Biel as an actress and just face the fact that half of the roles that she’s offered, her hubby JT should just take mainly. May be a bit far-fetched for some people to believe in, but the guy can do no wrong. Let’s just face that fact and live our lives a little bit better now.

Even though Biel is bad, everybody else seems to be on their A-game. Hell, with a cast THIS GOOD, I actually wonder what the hell even drew Burger to cast Dullsville-Biel in the first-place. Was it the looks? Was it the possibility of the nude scene? Was it because he was secretly having a fling with her that JT didn’t know about? Or, was it just because she was a big name and that’s what this movie needed to get any sort of viewers whatsoever? I’m going with the former. But anywho, back the cast at-hand.

Edward Norton is, as usual, good as Eisenheim and gives the guy a very dark, mysterious-path that never gives us the easy answering of knowing whether or not the guy is good, or bad. His intentions are never clear, and you never really have the idea in your head that he’s doing all of these magic tricks for the entertainment of others or the money, but something more. He’s an interesting character that I wish we got to see more of, other than just realizing who that person is that makes his knees weak. He even gets pushed to the back-burner somewhere around the final-act, as the movie takes it’s own detour into mystery-thriller territory and sort of forgets all about what makes him a living, breathing character. It’s still a fun, last-act, but a very disappointing one if you take Norton and the character he was playing into consideration.

Biel's facial-expressions tell it: she what she is doing in a movie with such fine actors as these.

Biel’s face tells it all: she has no idea what she is doing in a movie with such fine actors as these.

Rufus Sewell, much to nobody’s surprise whatsoever, plays Crown Prince Leopold, the corrupt and bastard-like ruler of the land, who soon hopes become king of the empire one day. Obviously, you know this guy is going to do evil and sadistic things throughout the large-portion of the flick, however, you sometimes get teentsie, tiny surprises of emotional-depth with this guy that seems real, honest, and more than just the traditional villain that we are used to seeing in these types of movies. But even though that depth and insight of that character comes out every once and awhile, it starts to be shoved back into him, just so the plot can move along and make him feel like he’s more and more of a dick, rather than a human-being. There’s a scene by the end with him where I really feel like I was starting to get the full picture of who the heck this guy really was, underneath all of the royalty and fancy-shizz, but sadly, it was a little too late for me and for him to really get the credit he deserved. Even if Sewell did a great-job with this character, I still feel like the script didn’t accompany him as well as it started-off as being. Poor guy, at least he still will forever and always be type-casted as that dick from now on.

The one who really steals the show in this whole movie, however, is in-fact Paul Giamatti as Chief Inspector Uhl. Uhl was a character that I thought was going to be the straight-up dickhead of the whole movie that was corrupt, mean, terrible, and ridiculous with all of the things that he did and used to his power as head of the police force. However, things for him, just like the plot itself, start to change and we see more of a moral-compass shell out of the guy, which was anymore than I ever expected. Giamatti plays this up so perfectly as we have no idea whether or not to trust this guy, believe he will do the right thing, or even, do anything reasonable to make his job and life seem like it has some sort of meaning. Watching Giamatti go through this internal conflict with himself was something of a work of magic (heehee), and it goes to show you that the guy can play anything he wants, and still have that pure-bread, lovable personality to him, no matter how dark or mean the character may be. Swell job, Paul. Swell.

Consensus: The Illusionist may not work when it comes to being about the love between our two main-characters, mainly because it doesn’t feel developed as well as the all of the fun and games of the magic-tricks, but with a superb-cast (minus Biel) and an inspired direction from Burger who seems to really enjoy this material, you have more enjoyment than you expect.

7 / 10 = Rental!!

“Fuckin’ rabbit out of the hat?!?!? No!! So stupid and unoriginal for a mind-bender like myself!!”

2000s, 7-7.5/10, Movies 2006, 7th Heaven, Aaron Johnson, Christopher Nolan, Eddie Marsan, Edward Norton, Eleanor Tomlinson, Erich Redman, Jake Wood, Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake, Karl Johnson, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Neil Burger, Nicholas Blane, Paul Giamatti, Philip McGough, Rufus Sewell, Scarlett Johansson, The Illusionist, The Prestige, Tom Fisher, Vincent Franklin

Running With Scissors (2006)

16 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on January 10, 2013

Cue the jokes about how this movie runs with scissors and ends-up tripping.

At the age of twelve, Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) finds himself amidst Victorian squalor living with his mother’s doctor’s bizarre family, while she (Annette Bening) goes off and becomes a total drug-addict, amongst other fucked-up things. Oh yeah, and it’s hard for little Augusten since not only is he a poet at such a young age, but he’s a gay one at that. Yay!

I never read Augusten Burrow’s 2002 memoir of the same name, and despite what all of the literary hipsters that I know continue to tell me, I still don’t ever plan on reading it, either. I’m not much of a reader as it is but with material that’s all about people being all wacky and strange just for the sake of being so, definitely rubs me the wrong-way, especially when it’s done in a flick like this.

See, the fact of the matter is that you can make a movie about a bunch of near-functional nut jobs that can still be a bit whack-o in the brain department, but are at least likable and understandable enough to connect to. Writers/directors like Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach can do this, and do it very well, but writer/director Ryan Murphy is not one of them, nor does he come even close. Instead of making these characters a bunch of whack-o’s that you actually feel something for, as if they were normal, functioning human-beings, you just seem them as whack-o’s with nothing really nice to say or do throughout the whole, dreadful 2 hours.

All you do throughout this whole flick is see a bunch of crazies yell, hoot, and holler at one another, and just do a bunch of random crap to each other that would seem almost too weird to be true (but trust me, this flick wants you to believe it’s source material REALLY IS TRUE!), and in ways, totally is. You never, not for one second, actually believe that all you see on-screen is actually how things happened in real-life for Augusten and if it did actually happen, it sure as hell shows you that it wasn’t a story that needed to be shown on the big-screen in the first-place, mostly because there isn’t much here to hold onto. I would say that the characters are worth the shot of standing-by and listening to, but even that’s a bit of a far-stretch since they are only there to be nothing more than just a plot-device of sure craziness. Watching people act all wacky and wild can be fun every once and awhile to watch, but as time goes on, there needs to be more substance brewing from underneath and that is just not here.

“And that little bitch that played the psycho ballet dancer won! Ever since then, I haven’t felt the same.”

Maybe the fact that I never read the memoir was the reason why I didn’t like it all that much, because there was a lot of crap that happened or was said here that I just didn’t understand. The whole idea of people looking at every single bit of life’s details with a clear-view and making something out of nothing, simply annoys the hell out of me in real-life, and even worse, annoys the most when I see it in a movie and that’s all I saw here. Everybody speaks as if they just got done reading Hemingway and felt the need to rant and rave about what life is all about, and it’s okay at first because it makes sense to why these characters are so strange, but it becomes to be a bit of a bore and unbelievable. You know, just like the rest of the characters and the movie itself. Heck, there’s even a scene where Brian Cox is checking out his crapola (be ready to hear that term sooner or later) and talking about what it’s shape, size, and formation means to his life and everybody else’s around him. Did I get it? No, but would I have had I actually took time out of my lazy day and read the memoir? Probably not. It’s just the type of writing that annoys me and shows that people have nothing else better to do with their way of contracting humor, then just showing a bunch of ridiculous and crude things to really shock you and make you feel as if you’ve seen something from another planet. However, I think I was on another planet when I saw this movie.

It’s even worse, though, when you take into consideration at how freakin’ uneven this whole thing is. My buddy and I were just bored one night, decided to watch this because it was under the “Comedy” section on On Demand, and for the first 30 minutes, neither one of us were laughing. We weren’t laughing because what the flick was trying to do and shove down our throats, wasn’t funny (even though it really isn’t a funny movie), but it was because there was nothing really funny actually happening. It was just a bunch of dark, sarcastic drama that I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to feel weirded-out by or just go along with it and see if I ever lighten-up to the dead-pan tone and feel. I never did and to be honest, I don’t think the flick itself did, either, because there was just way too many moments where the film changed itself-up. One second, you’ll be watching a scene of some cooky lady eating doggy biscuits, and then after that, you’ll get some heartbreaking discussion between an estranged mother and son. It’s all-over-the-place and constantly changing tones from right-to-left and that is not as fun or entertaining as it sounds. It’s obvious and it never stops to be, and that’s why I just wanted somebody in this flick to die and spice things up. I’m sorry, it’s just the thought-process I go through when a movie sucks THIS BAD.

The only, real saving-grace to this whole flick is the ensemble cast of characters that do all that they can here, but in the end, fall prey to a terrible script and direction. Joseph Cross is fine as our lead, Augusten Burroughs, and is serviceable as a kid that obviously has a lot of problems with growing-up, being a poet, being gay, and not really having a connection with his mother. It should have been a lot more relateable for most kids going through, or have been through teenage-angst, but it’s oddly not. It’s just a kid having a problem with a mother of his that just so happens to be hopped-up all of the time. Hey, I don’t know if that’s everybody else’s life story but if so, well, you just may be able to find something to suit your fancy here.

Right about now is where breakfast would be the second-thing on my moment.

Actually, the real stand-out of this whole cast is the woman who plays that same hopped-up mother, Annette Bening. Bening is great as this drugged-up, but somewhat schizophrenic that does all that she can to make herself happy, but in the end, just can’t. Bening can play a bitch like no other and she’s great in this role as a mother that’s never there and when she is, is like a freakin’ plague of problems. Yeah, she’s a mean, old woman that seems like she really deserves a nice kick in the teeth by not just me, but anybody, but regardless, it’s still impressive to see from here, especially considering the fact that the girl keeps all of the energy alive and well in this dead flick. And by “dead”, I mean Grateful Dead because let’s be honest, you may just want to be high for this movie. It would probably help a crap-load, although, it obviously didn’t help me with anything.

The rest of the cast is fine too, but none of them can really keep up with Bening. Brian Cox plays Dr. Finch, a slimy psychiatrist who seems to be doing people favors, but also has a bit of a dark-side to him as well that’s maybe not so favorable. Cox is great, what else is new by now? Evan Rachel Wood plays the skanky-looking daughter of his that definitely should have been in this movie a lot more, considering she brings a lot of fun and wit to the screen, when everybody else seems like they’re falling asleep (count me in on that nap). Same could almost be said for Gwyneth Paltrow as the total kiss-ass of the family, Hope, and definitely seems like she got a role for herself that displayed her looks, her beauty, and her knack for comedy. Sad thing is, she’s not that funny here. Not her fault, writer’s fault. I was also very surprised to see a very good performance from Joseph Fiennes, who plays the gay boy-toy of Augusten and just so happens to be the only boy of the Finch family. Fiennes rarely shows up in anything now but it was nice to see him when he was a bit wild, wacky, and free. Too bad he had to be all that, especially in a shit-pile like this.

Consensus: Despite that obviously seems like they’re game for this type of material, it really lets them down as every character is unlikable, distasteful, annoying, and terribly unbelievable, almost to the point of where the whole 2 hours and 2 minutes of Running With Scissors seriously makes you take that title into consideration with your own life. It’s a drastic way of thinking, but it’s the truth.

2/10=Crapola!!

Looks like my backyard, come hoarders season. Can’t wait!

2-2.5/10, 2000s, Movies 2006, Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Colleen Camp, Dagmara Dominczyk, Evan Rachel Wood, Gabriel Guedj, Gabrielle Union, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Kaeding, Jill Clayburgh, Joseph Cross, Joseph Fiennes, Kristin Chenoweth, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Patrick Wilson, Running With Scissors, Ryan Murphy

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

9 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on December 12, 2012

Come on Ethan, I thought you didn’t need women.

Super-spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from active duty to train new IMF agents and start a life as a married man with his new squeeze (Michelle Monaghan). But he is called back into action to confront the toughest villain he’s ever faced, named Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an international weapons and information provider with no remorse and no conscience.

If you have seen the first two Mission: Impossible movies, liked them, had a good time with them, and didn’t get bored watching Cruise play cool, then chances are, you are going to like this one, have a good time with it, and not bother one-bit that Cruise is playing cool, once again. Actually, I could just use that one-sentence to sum-up my whole review and be done with it, but since I am a critic and I just spent 2 hours of my life watching this thing, I’m going to take away 5-7 minutes away from your life, just so you can read what I have to say. It’s a sort of domino effect, but trust me, you don’t really have to read this. I’m probably just going to go on and on about Katie Holmes and how right she was. Seriously, take a drink every time I mention her name. The review will be a lot better.

Anywhoo, after highly-stylish directors like Brian De Palma and John Woo took over the last two installments, J.J. Abrams comes up on-board and gives his first-shot at directing a full-length, feature movie. Before this, Abrams was known for creating Alias, Lost, Felicity, and other popular TV-shows that people loved and fan-boys went oogle over, which makes this movie all the more interesting to watch now, considering this is also the same guy that went on and brought Trekkies back to life almost three years ago. It’s great to see a director that obviously loves these old-school action movies, but yet, doesn’t forget to throw some of the newer-stuff in as well to fully get us going and have us feel like we’ve gotten the best of both worlds.

“Felicity’s graduated, bitch.”

Thankfully, that is exactly what Abrams brings to the table here and right from the first-sequence where Hunt and his gal get tied-up and interrogated, you know you are in for a real, real action-treat. Actually, after that scene, the movie doesn’t really ever seem to slow down. We get a bunch of non-stop, tense action-sequences that seem to pull out something new each and every time, and a couple of twists and turns that are sure to have you wondering what’s going to happen next, but in the good way that actually makes sense and not confusing like the first-one. Basically, it was a great choice to bring Abrams along for the ride on this one and it’s obvious that the guy knows how to stage a tense, suspenseful action-scene that will have you gripping your seat, even if you do know how it’s going to end. That’s the sign of a good action director, actually, let alone, director none the less.

However, if you do not like these movies chances are, you’re not going to like this even more. It’s not as stupid as the others, that’s for damn sure, but it definitely feels like a plot-line that wasn’t really thought-out well enough for an action movie of this caliber. For instance, it’s never really brought to my attention what was so bad about this Davian guy in the first-place. Yeah, he’s got weapons and materials of mass-destruction, but I never really saw any of that put to test nor did I really see him actually go to work on any of that whatsoever. I just heard that the guy was bad, realized he was a bit of a dick, and I guess, just assumed that he wasn’t a guy that plays on the good-side. There’s a whole bunch of other problems with this plot that didn’t seem to really make all that much sense to me but in the end, I soon realized that it didn’t matter a lick and all that did matter was watching Ethan Hunt be as cool, as he might as well can be.

Faster than a speeding bullet coming from an Chopper, he's Ethan Hunt dammit.

When you have Scientology on your-side, you can out-run anything. Even speeding bullets.

Once again, Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt like he always does: cool, swift, witty, sneaky, and most of all, smart. Cruise plays this role like no other, has no intentions on leaving, and you know what? I don’t really mind it all that much, either. Yeah, the dude’s getting old and a bit funny-looking in terms of botox but the guy still can play this role in his sleep and have us love him, no matter what crazy shit he does or says in his personal life. At the time of the release of this movie, I know that was a bit hard to get by but to me, it doesn’t make much of a difference now and never really did.

The rest of the cast is pretty solid too, but the one I was really impressed by most of all was Philip Seymour Hoffman as Owen Davian, the main-villain that Hunt is forced to mess with. What makes Davian so different from the others, is the fact that the guy holds no remorse for the things he’s done or is about to do, and plain and simply looks at you in the face, tells you he’s going to put a bullet through it, and says so with no emotion or expressions whatsoever. You really feel like this guy will hold you up on his promise when he’s going to get right down to business and kill you, and that’s why this guy was so freaky to watch and most of all, actually seemed like a legitimate threat to Hunt after all. I will say that his character doesn’t meet the smartest demise of all, but before all of that, Hoffman is electric, fun, and very sinister to watch, in a way that makes me wish he played more villainous-type roles. In a way, I guess he does but oh well, doesn’t matter because the guy can act.

I thought I said no girls, Ethan!

The only one in this cast who really stuck-out like a sore-thumb and seemed to bring everything down was Michelle Monaghan as Hunt’s new lady-friend, Julia. I don’t know if it was Monaghan’s acting, her writing, or just the shoddy-development for her character, but I didn’t give a crap that she was there, why she was there, or what really even was going to happen to her in the end. Abrams tries very hard to throw at us that Hunt is not only doing this mission for the safety of country, but the safety of his heart as well and as appealing and relateable as that may be for some audience-members watching, I for one, didn’t really buy it and give a single-crap whatsoever. If you want to know why, just go on back to my M:I-2 review and you’ll see why I don’t think Hunt should play around with gals. That is it.

Consensus: Mission: Impossible III is probably the best of the whole series because of it’s electric-direction from Abrams, tense action-sequences that never seem to end, and fun-loving spirit for both old, and new action-movies of the world and makes you feel like this is a series that will never run out of a steam, just as long as they stay fresh with new-directors coming on-board and keep Cruise in-line. Oh yeah, by the way, Katie Holmes. Drink up, people!

8/10=Matinee!!

“Employ me again, Tom. Please?

2000s, 8-8.5/10, Movies 2006, Aaron Paul, Alias, Bahar Soomekh, Bellamy Young, Billy Crudup, Brian De Palma, Carla Gallo, Eddie Marsan, Felicity, Greg Grunberg, J.J. Abrams, John Woo, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Katie Holmes, Keri Russell, Laurence Fishburne, Lost, Maggie Q, Michelle Monaghan, Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 2, Mission: Impossible III, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sasha Alexander, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames

Borat (2006)

16 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on November 13, 2012

I have to take a trip to Kazakhstan at least once in my life.

Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) travels from his primitive home in Kazakhstan to the USA to make a documentary. On his cross-country road-trip, Borat meets real people in real situations.

I’ll never, ever forget the first time I checked out this flick way back when it first came out and laughed my ass off by almost everything that was going on here. Take it for granted, I saw this when it first came out and I was probably around 12, so of course everything is a lot funnier then, but I checked up on it again to see if I was wrong but what I got was that it only gets funnier, as you get older.

The funniest aspect of this whole flick is that you can’t script stuff like this. Yeah, it’s another mockumentary but it’s all real except for everything Borat is talking about and that actually makes it funnier to see how these people react to this guy. I was really surprised by how producers were able to get all of the people they did for this movie, because some of them look like some real assholes, while others just look like they are terribly uncomfortable being around this dude. Although I think I would be too if I was near a guy that kept trying to kiss me and trying to ask me about my sister, and if she has sex with lots of men or not. May not sound that funny on paper, but when you play it all out to real people, who have no exact idea as to what the hell is really going on, then it’s comedy gold.

However, I don’t think I’ve explained just how funny this damn movie is! Everything here, pretty much from start to finish is absolutely hilarious because it never stops with the uncomfortable situations, the politically incorrect jokes, and the people they actually grab from the streets to do this movie. It’s a very offensive flick, that makes so many harsh jokes towards every type of person from America (Jewish, Pentecostals, African Americans, Gays, Feminists, New Yorkers, Southerners and college students, to name a few) but it never seems like overkill. Instead, it just gets funnier and funnier with each and every situation these guys pull off and just when you think they won’t do it, trust me, they do it alright. If you don’t laugh at this movie, then the joke is on you and you don’t deserve to watch something like this. Me, on the other hand, had to actually hold my side because of how hard I was laughing. This is my 3rd viewing too people!

What’s probably funnier than all of the offensive jokes and uncomfortable situations here, is that all of the actual people they get to interview, tell you something about the America that we live in. America is a place that I’m glad to have been born and raised in, but I can definitely say that there is flaws to the people of our society, which is probably with all other societies in the world as well. We see people that are racists that tell Borat what type of guns are the best to kill Jews with, we see a car dealer tell him what’s the best “pussy magnet”, we see some dude from a rodeo say how Borat should change his look so he doesn’t look like “a Muslim, who would more than likely have a bomb strapped to his chest”, and we see a bunch of college kids say how all women should be slaves and bow down to what they have to say. It’s some real effed up shit we get to hear and see here, but it’s all true and that’s what is probably the most jaw-dropping thing about this flick. Some of this may actually have you think about our society and realize just how dumb we are such as whenever we see two gay guys making out, we frown upon it, but cheer on George Bush and the Army to go off and kill every single person in Iraq. Hey, I’m not saying I’m supporting or going against anything that the U.S. is going for but this film brings up a lot more questions about our society than you would expect from a dude that runs around asking ladies for “sexy time”. Comedy that makes you think, haven’t heard of that in awhile.

My only complaint about this flick is that as hard as I did laugh, after watching this one for a third time, I also didn’t laugh as much upon this viewing as I knew what was coming, and what wasn’t. The whole idea of shock value is to not expect what’s going to come up next, and I did here, but I still laughed a lot so I can’t really fault the film for that at all. Maybe if I was 12 again, I would have given this a 10/10. Maybe, just maybe.

The whole subject about this flick, is that it’s pretty anti-Semantic in how Borat despises Jews and wants to get away from them as fast as he can. However, Sacha Baron Cohen is not a racist at all, in fact, he is actually a practicing Jew. This really surprised me when I first saw it because it made me realize that this guy was in on the joke the whole time and I think because of his involvement, it wasn’t banned in every single area of the world, but also makes this character Borat, one of the funniest and most endearing racists ever caught on film.

Whenever people see Baron Cohen now, people think of him as this goofy, somewhat larger-than-life character who always plays these insane characters and never snaps out of them. The character Borat, wasn’t the first to show this, but it’s one that showed that he is a comedic genius. No matter what Cohen does in this movie, whether it be hanging out with a bunch of black people in the ghetto, taking a shit in front of Trump’s Towers, or even getting drunk with a bunch of college kids, he never drops character and always stays in character. Cohen does so many embarrassing things, most of which, he puts himself in, but the whole time you can’t help but wonder how a guy can go throughout a movie like this, and just keep on making it seem like he is really thinking this. Cohen definitely has a pair of brass balls and I wish that he continued to do more mockumentary stuff like this and Bruno, but I guess fame was too much for him and his characters. Poor guy, at least The Dictator was fine and dandy.

Consensus: Borat is not only a comedy that absolutely delivers the laughs with an offensive/mean streak unlike any other flick I have ever seen, but also shows you a side of America that will sometimes make you gasp by just how shocklingly cruel and small-minded can be and think. It’s a comedy that makes you think, while still bust your gut. Sounds like a winner to me!

9.5/10=Full Price!!

2000s, 9-9.5/10, Movies 2006, Borat, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Bruno, Ken Davitian, Larry Charles, Luenell, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pamela Anderson, Sacha Baron Cohen, The Dictator

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

4 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on November 4, 2012

Luckiest freakin’ student ever!

When Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) joins St George’s as the new art teacher, Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) senses a kindred spirit. But Barbara is not the only one drawn to her. Sheba begins an illicit affair and Barbara becomes the keeper of her secret.

Honestly, what could would ever want to pass up on a chance to sleep with their teacher, especially if that teacher was Cate Blanchett?!? I mean come on people, let’s be real here.

Going right into this flick, I was expecting something that was going to be pretty generic with a good cast to elevate it all. However, aside from the cast, it’s also the writing that really works here and keeps everything tight, just when it starts to loosen up a bit. The film starts off with a very normal pace with a chronicle of these two ladies becoming “friends”, but then when the affair is caught by Barb, all hell breaks loose and we have ourselves a psychological thriller that didn’t really stop moving. May get a tad predictable at times, but you’re able to get past that thanks to everything else that’s going on

Everything is very dark and eerie in this flick because it touches on a lot of topics like pedophilia, adultery, and lesbianism but it still somehow maintains a very dry sense of wit that made me laugh at times. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this is a dark comedy, but I will say that it catches you off guard sometimes by how witty it can be, but you still can’t get past the fact that this flick continues to go deeper, deeper, and deeper into its story until there’s barely anything left in it. A very fine script and the direction from Richard Eyre, may not be anything special but at least he isn’t trying to get involved with the story too much. He just lets it play-out like it should.

My main problem with this flick was that the whole reasoning as to how this affair started in the first place seemed a bit unbelievable. First of all, Sheba does not seem like the type of older gal that would develop a school girl crush on a boy, and then to start shacking the high hoots with him either. It seemed like Sheba herself, was a little too intelligent and mature for this type of behavior but then again, I can’t say this too much because certain shit like this does happen in real-life. Pissed that it doesn’t happen at my school but teacher-student banging does go down none the less.

What went along with this problem was that the reasoning Sheba gave as to why she wanted this kid in the first place, was because she felt lonely with her husband, who’s 20 years older than her, and the family she had to raise with him. Yeah I get this, but the film barely shows us any of these problems ever happening until later on in the flick when her mind starts to get a little crazier from all of the constant paranoia of being found-out. Maybe if they touched up on this a bit more, I would have been able to believe it all but it came off as a bit of a stretch or a lame excuse for this chick wanting to bone a younger kid. It also didn’t help that the kid was a terrible actor, and I swore to God that if he said the word “miss” in his fake-ass Irish accent, I was going to punch the screen hoping to get a piece of him too. Dreams never do come true!

However, all of those problems are almost forgotten about whenever I think about the performances here from the trio of leads here. Judi Dench is very unglamorous as Barbara because she’s sad, lonely, old, looking for love, but also very, very, very creepy deep-down inside. She’s pretty much playing a crotchety old hag that has a lot more heart and warmth to her that makes you feel some sympathy for her character but then you also start to feel like you can’t trust this chick and neither can any other character in this flick either. Dench definitely takes over the screen every time she gets a chance to, and shows just how creepy of a character she can be.

Cate Blanchett is also a revelation as Sheba, one of her more unsympathetic character roles. Blanchett is constantly on fire with this character because she’s sad, lonely, and in need of love, but in a very different way. Unlike Barbara, Sheba is a character that you can trust in what she’s going to do next and even though Dench gets a lot of crazy material t0 work with, Blanchett is still allowed to let loose as well especially when it’s on each other. I don’t know what it was here, but there’s just something so awesome and perfect about watching two respected actresses like Blanchett and Dench go all-out on each other in a cat fight that features barely any physicality; all verbal baby.You can’t also forget to mention the always perfect, Bill Nighy as Sheba’s husband. Nighy almost steals every scene he has on-screen with each of these two chickies, but it’s by the end when all of the emotions of this character start to pour out is when you realize that this character has a lot more to him than you would expect. After seeing him and Dench try their hardest to be happy and make love in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I think it’s pretty safe to say that they have both regained my respect for them.

Consensus: Notes on a Scandal may have problems with believablity, but where it succeeds in is perfect performances from its cast, an script that continues to go farther down into what it’s trying to explore, and a plot that may be generic and simple at times, ends up being very unpredictable and thrilling.

8/10=Matinee!!

2000s, 8-8.5/10, Movies 2006, Alice Bird, Andrew Simpson, Anne-Marie Duff, Bill Nighy, Cate Blanchett, Emma Kennedy, Judi Dench, Juno Temple, Max Lewis, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Notes on a Scandal, Richard Eyre, Tameka Empson, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Halloween Horror Movie Month: Fido (2006)

5 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on October 21, 2012

I don’t think as many people would have gotten on Michael Vick’s case if he had zombies fighting each other.

Set in the 1950′s, the story takes place years after a radiation cloud took over the Earth and allowed the dead to walk again (aka zombies). But a company named Zomcom has finally made it able to allow zombies to not only be servants and do all of your chores, but also be your friends in ways, too. Little Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray), has finally found a friend to confide in named Fido (Billy Connolly), problem is, he’s a zombie that actually threatens mankind, something my dog has yet to do.

Take a Leave it to Beaver episode, give him the dog Lassie, have it directed by George A. Romero, and this is what you may come up with. Sadly, for all of you Zombie-genre lovers out there, it’s just not quite as awesome as one would expect. But having a zombie as a pet would make for a great show-and-tell.

Basically, this is a one-joke premise but writer/director Andrew Currie milks it for all that he’s got. The whole joke behind this film is that zombies walk around as normal citizens doing normal citizen-like activities such as taking out the trash, delivering milk door-to-door, grilling some burgers on the grill during a BBQ, and even providing some twisted and sick-minded people some lovin’ at night as well. It’s an original way of telling a zombie satire and for the most part, Currie makes it work because he always plays off of these 50′s-like caricatures that have been done so many times in plenty other films, but this time just provide more humor due to the twist. I laughed a good amount during this film, which really took me by surprise since it seemed too obvious, but there were some nice touches that Currie gave this film for that ultra-retro 50′s look and feel.

But as good as funny as this may be, there’s always something here that’s left to be desired. They milk this premise just enough to make me laugh and enjoy myself, but they never go the full distance to where I was surprised at the turns they took with this story. You can tell where this story is going to go from start-to-finish, how, and why exactly it is and that was a total bummer considering this could have been a nice blend of humor that mixes itself up nice with a horror movie as well. In fact, that horror element was barely there at all because any time it seemed like the film was going to go for a full-out, zombie scare-fest, it sort of just cut it out as quick as possible and made it seem like Currie played it a bit too safe.

I wasn’t expecting to be totally scared out of my mind with this material, but to me, zombies are some of the scariest mothereffers even when it comes to horror (even if they are the oldest trick used in the book). So when a film comes around with zombies in it, regardless of how they’re used, I’m expecting to be a little scared at the fact that they’re running rampant, eating people, and spreading their virus. The problem here, is that I didn’t feel any tension whatsoever and I was barely even scared by the fact that these zombies could start to eat up this whole entire, little town of Willard (teehee).

Also, for all of you gore-loving son of a bitches out there, there’s enough of that here to satisfy your dirty needs, but even that feels a bit tamed. Yeah, there’s a couple of chewed-up limbs here and there, but nothing where I literally wanted to throw-up. I never feel like that with that when I watch horror movies, but I would always like to. That’s a real shame too, since this film is rated-R and I don’t really think that Currie would have had anything to worry about, had he gone on a bit farther with the gore-pushing.

The performances by everybody in this film was the real strong-point and I think one of the elements that entertained me the most. Carrie-Anne Moss is great as the subdued mom that starts to come out of her shell a bit and become a cool mommy, once things start to get a little twisty with her hormones. No trust me, it doesn’t go in the direction with her character that you may think but it would have been a lot more cool and twisted had it done so. Dylan Baker plays her a-hole husband, and he’s great as well playing a daddy that doesn’t seem to know how to even do the right thing for his son and can’t stop complaining about the fact that his daddy almost ate him once. Billy Connolly was also great as Fido, in a more subdued role where he has to use a lot of growling and facial expressions to really convey what his character’s intentions, even if he is just a damn zombie. That actually makes it a bit harder for him, but he still pulls it off very well. K’Sun Ray was fine as little Timmy Robinson, and doesn’t really seem to be one of those little, annoying child-actors that we usually get in movies like these. Oh yeah, and Tim Blake Nelson is here as one of those twisted and sick-minded people I mentioned earlier. That guy is always a blast to watch.

Consensus: The cast, comedy, and original premise make Fido a lot more entertaining, but it never goes the full distance to be flat-out gory, sick, twisted, or even scary for that matter, and that’s one of the most disappointing factors of this could-have-been comedy-horror classic.

6/10=Rental!!

2010s, 6-6.5/10, Movies 2006, Adam Scorgie, Alexia Fast, Andrew Currie, Billy Connolly, Carrie-Anne Moss, Clint Carleton, Dylan Baker, Fido, George A. Romero, George Romero, Henry Czerny, Jennifer Clement, K'Sun Ray, Lassie, Leave it to Beaver, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Peter Stormare, Rob LaBelle, Sonja Bennett, Tim Blake Nelson, Willard

Halloween Horror Movie Month: Slither (2006)

6 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on October 18, 2012

Do small monsters like the ones here ever attack a big city?

The sleepy town of Wheelsy could be any small town in America, somewhat quaint and gentle, peopled with friendly folks who mind their own business. But just beneath the surface charm, something unnamed and evil has arrived, is growing, and has came to take over the small town. Nobody knows what they are, but they look like small-leeches that go right for the brain.

Even though it’s not right to judge a person after only seeing one-piece of their work, to me, writer/director James Gunn seems like one fucked-up individual. Super was one of those very violent flicks that did work, but still, it was so violent that was at-times hard to watch even if it was all played for dark and sinister laughs. His directorial debut is sort of the same-thing, except this time, with even more stuff to make you look away from the screen. But it’s Halloween, so what are ya gonna do?

What I liked most about Gunn’s direction and what he’s able to do with this sickly material is that he doesn’t ever shy away from doing anything that would practically make a person sick. Everything you see in this film is disgusting, gross, slimy, juicy, and altogether, just plain and simply over-the-top, but what saves it is that constant winks and nods at the audience that Gunn gives and makes this material more fun to be around. Gunn knows the type of movie he’s making and even knows the movies that he’s making several homages to, so that obviously doesn’t stop him from just letting loose on some crazy, wild horror fun that take the B-movie audience, says “Hey! Look at me!”, and allows them all to do so with a great time ahead of them.

You got all of the typical horror movie elements you need to make a successful one: blood, guts, gore, action, violence, semi-naked women, corny-lines, over-the-top situations, and many, I do repeat, many moments that will probably have you saying, “What the hell did I just see?”. But the best part of it all, is that it’s done in such a fun way that you just decide to go along with the ride and believe it or not, may actually have you finding yourself laughing at a lot of what goes on in this flick, as did I. Gunn has a perfect knack for comedic-timing and knowing when and how to place them into certain scenes, and not once did I feel like he dropped the ball on that element one-bit. In fact, it probably wouldn’t have hurt if he gave a couple of more funny lines here and there, but with what he did, I was fine with and that’s all that mattered to me.

The problem I think I had with this movie was that there was little to no surprises with this material one-bit. It seemed like Gunn had all of the right material in-place for a movie that could have literally went anywhere with itself, with any character, and any plot-twist whatsoever, but instead, just played it straight by giving us a story that’s simple, easy, predictable, but still fun. Hell, the only time I actually felt a decent-level of suspense throughout the whole damn film was when one of the gals is in the bathtub and the little leeches are coming after her. That whole sequence kept me on-the-edge of my seat and was the only time during the whole movie where I felt like something bad was going to happen to this character, but then again, it was only 3 minutes out of the whole hour and 36 time-limit. That leaves us an hour and 3 minutes left of just unsuspenseful, but fun piece of horror-entertainment.

Also, anybody looking towards this film for some great spooks, chills, and scares whatsoever, are going to have to look elsewhere. I don’t know if this is necessarily considered a problem with the film since it’s sort of what separated it from the usual crap I see out there time and time again, but anybody going to see a horror film with monsters and zombies, are probably going to come out a bit disappointed in seeing a zany and loopy shoot ‘em up that doesn’t really care about scaring you in the least bit. Once again, not a big problem for me, but for those horror freaks out there (and trust me, I know there are plenty), you may be a bit ticked off.

Most of the laughs that actually occur in this film, are mainly because of the fun-loving cast that Gunn has been able to assemble. Nathan Fillion is always a delight to watch with whatever it is that he does, and his performance here as Sheriff Bill Pardy is no different. Fillion has some of the best-lines in the whole film, but his comedic-timing is what really makes him so much fun to watch as every crazy situation the guy gets thrown into, he surprisingly somehow finds his way out of it with a quick quirk here and there. Playing opposite of him is the equally as-funny, Elizabeth Banks, as Starla Grant. Banks, no matter what junk she’s in, always has the best comedic-delivery out of everybody in the film and even though she is still playing a bit of a straight-woman here with this role, she still gets to show-off her comedic-chops every once and awhile to remind us why we all love this girl so much in the first-place.

Playing her d-bag, evil husband, Michael Rooker, shines at another one of his “villainous roles” that reminds you why so many people type-cast him as a bad man in the first-place, the guy’s so great at it you. I don’t know when the next time will be when I see Rooker play “the nice guy next-door” role in a movie, but if I never do get that, I won’t be too bummed considering the bad-guy roles are basically what he was meant to play. Don’t believe, watch Henry, then you’ll see. The other dude in this flick who had some of the better lines and stole just about scene he was in was Gregg Henry as the foul-mouthed talking mayor. Any guy who can make me laugh at the way he says “cock sucker” is always a winner in my book and that’s why it was so much fun to watch him work his magic with this zany script.

Consensus: People expecting a full-out, scare-fest will most likely be disappointed in what they see in Slither, but people looking for a fun, entertaining, wild, self-knowing, bloody horror ride from start-to-finish, should look no further and give this baby a shot.

7.5/10=Rental!!

2000s, 7-7.5/10, Movies 2006, Brenda James, Don Thompson, Dustin Milligan, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, James Gunn, Jenna Fischer, Jennifer Copping, Lorena Gale, Michael Rooker, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Nathan Fillion, Slither, Super, Tania Saulnier

World Trade Center (2006)

7 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on September 11, 2012

Surprised that I didn’t hear about Lee Harvey Oswald in here at all.

This follows the true story of the heroic survival and rescue of two Port Authority policemen – Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Officer William J Jimeno (Michael Pena) – who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, after they went in to help people escape.

Back in 2006, when this was first coming, people had two reservations about it at first: 1. Is 5 years too soon? and 2. What the hell is Oliver Stone going to do with this material? To be honest, these reservations were both very reasonable and understood at the time because people were (and still are) grieving over their lost ones from that fateful day and Stone has always been known to get pretty crazy and paranoid about the topics he covers. But thankfully, nothing ever really goes down the wrong path here. I mean that too, nothing.

The best part about Stone’s direction here is that he doesn’t pull any punches with this touchy story. That means there’s no conspiracy theories about who was behind the Bush administration at the time or who was actually behind the attacks themselves, but instead just gives us a true story of courage and the man’s will to fight for survival no matter what the obstacles may be standing in their way. Sounds like something that is very out of the ordinary for Stone to direct but he doesn’t lose his mind with this material and keeps everything grounded to where this becomes one of those inspirational stories you would expect it to be.

Going into a film about this certain subject, you have to expect your heartstrings to be tugged at a bit and even though they do, it doesn’t feel manipulative. Simply put, this is Stone’s way of showing us how two policeman, fought for their lives just to stay alive, tell the story of it all, and go on back home to their wife and kids. It’s one of those sappy stories that we always see and hear about but it isn’t used in that same context here. It feels real, it feels genuine, and it feels like something that Stone really does rightfully care about and feel for. Weird to think that this is the same dude who was out there showing Mickey and Mallory shooting people’s heads off, would also be one of the first people to pay tribute to the men and women that died on 9/11.

But aside from being very genuine and true to it’s emotions and who it’s trying to give love towards, there’s not much else here that’s really eventful or groundbreaking in terms of story-telling which makes it a bit more tedious in a way. This is a story about real human-beings being in real-life situation/catastrophe, but maybe there should have been more excitement, more tension, more, I don’t know, more suspense as to know what’s going to happen. I wasn’t asking for a fast-paced action movie that took place in New York during 9/11, but I was just waiting for something to really pull me in fully and keep my eyes glued but instead I just found myself and my mind going into other places. I have no idea but it just did and maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t in the most perfect mood to watch this.

The movie looks great with plenty of detail and attention going towards how New York looked like during and after the Towers fell. It was really neat to see how realistic everything looked as you could almost feel the same pandemonium as everybody else did there but there could have been more of that. There was this really cool sequence where Stone gathers real-life footage from people checking out what happened on 9/11 from all over the world and it’s a sequence that shows you the kind of impact this even had on the world, not just our own country. This showed me that Stone maybe played it a little too safe in just focusing on this little story of two men, and could have gone a bit bigger by focusing on the environment surrounding them and how everybody felt during this time but I guess Stone didn’t want to go too far because then he would have had to start bringing out the conspiracy theories, and then things would have gotten bad for this movie.

Oh, another reservation some people may have had about this film beforehand may have also been that Nicolas Cage was in the lead role as Sergeant John McLoughlin, but no need to fear people, he’s actually pretty good here. I think it would be pretty hard for Cage to screw up a role like this, considering he barely moves and just stays underneath a huge piece of rubble the whole film, but the guy does well with it and reminds us that he can still handle roles like these. The one who really gets away with this flick is Michael Peña as Officer William J Jimeno, showing a sweet innocence to him that makes us sympathize with this character even more because all he shows is love and sweetness to everyone around him even before this happened. Both are good and work very well together, as well as everybody else in this cast, but those New York accents got to be a bit too much for me at points. I get it, everybody in this movie is practically from New York or somewhere near there so they have to have an accent but do they really need to be this deep? It get’s distracting at times, but you’ll start to forget about that once you start to see all of the notable faces that Stone has pop-up on the screen. It’s sort of like a really fun game of “Hey, remember me?”.

Consensus: World Trade Center is a rare example of Oliver Stone playing it really, really safe which has it’s positives and negatives, but mostly shows us the true story of two brave Americans that did whatever they could do stay alive in a time and place like New York City during 9/11.

7/10=Rental!!

2000s, 7-7.5/10, Movies 2006, Alex Trebek, Alexa Gerasimovich, Anthony Piccininni, Armando Riesco, Brad William Henke, Connor Paolo, Danny Nucci, Donna Murphy, Frank Whaley, Gary Stretch, Jay Hernandez, Jon Bernthal, Jude Ciccolella, Lee Harvey Oswald, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Michael Peña, Michael Shannon, Morgan Flynn, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Natural Born Killers, Ned Eisenberg, Nicholas Turturro, Nick Damici, Nicolas Cage, Oliver Stone, Stephen Dorff, Viola Davis, William Mapother, World Trade Center

Tell No One (2006)

13 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on July 17, 2012

It’s like Hitchcock with subtitles.

Paediatrician Dr Alex Beck (François Suzette) has been devastated since his childhood sweetheart and wife, Margot, was savagely murdered in the early days of their marriage eight years before. But when he receives an anonymous email, he sees a woman’s face standing in a crowd and being filmed in real time. Margot’s face… is she still alive?

Wow doesn’t that plot sound so different and original….? Of course you know that this is pretty much the same old generic thriller plot we get where the Everday Man finally gets to square off against The Man and find out more about himself and just what the hell is really going on with this case. However, the difference here is that it’s from French film-maker Guillaume Canet, which makes a huge difference.

Canet starts this film out as your ordinary mystery thriller where you have no idea what’s going on and why everything is so suspicious all of a sudden. The atmosphere is pretty chilling but it only gets better once the whole thrilling aspect of the flick starts to pick up and that’s where this film got me. Canet keeps on throwing us plot twist after plot twist after plot twist and it keeps the story more and more intriguing and interesting as it goes on. Certain things happen at first, and you have no idea why or for what reason but as the film goes on the answers start to come out and Canet will throw you a little brief hint here and there just to fool around with you. The problem most people will have with this flick is that there is a lot of reading here involved, but I think that also helps it since my French is terrible and it helps spell everything out just a bit more than what I usually get with these types of thrillers.

You get everything here, that you would get with any normal type of thriller: running , chasing, romance, heartbreak, bad things happening to good people, people dying, people getting shot, people about to get shot, gangsters, sex, and some lesbians (not in that sexy way though). It’s all here but it all feels fresh and original once the story starts to develop more, almost as if Canet watched ‘The Fugitive’ but realized that half-way through that you can still have all of the other stuff that happen in these types of flicks and decided to just throw them all in there for shits and gigs. Somehow, it works.

My only problem with this flick was that at the end, when all of the questions finally get answered in one big shock of a scene, the film still doesn’t seem to make as much sense as it would like to think. I can’t really give away any major plot points and I can’t say that everything in this flick didn’t make any sense but there will still some head scratchers for me even though I payed attention to the whole damn thing. This whole paragraph probably sounds very vague and stupid but I just don’t want to give any of the plot twists away so go watch it yourself and see what you think effers!

Since I don’t really watch a whole bunch of French films (let alone, foreign films in general), I don’t know who is really the who’s who of French cinema but I can definitely say that they have some notable faces here that all do excellent jobs. François Suzette is pretty damn good as Doctor Alexandre Beck, a guy who just wants to know what the hell happened to his wife. This guy seems very normal but then we start to see him change in the midst of all these crazy happenings and it’s great how Suzette was able to channel all of that simply through the emotions and looks on his face. I honestly thought that this was going to kick the whole police department’s ass and with the inspiration that he had for doing so, I wouldn’t doubt it either. There are a whole bunch of familiar faces here such as Kristin Scott Thomas as one of his lesbian friends (meowww), Gilles Lellouche as a tough-ass hoodlum that you want on your side named Bruno, Jean Rochefort as a bad-ass gangster that doesn’t speak much or even show up that much but when he does, you know it’s some real business, and there are plenty others here that you have all seen before but just can’t say their names.

Consensus: Tell No One doesn’t make perfect sense when it’s all said and done, but the film is entertaining, exciting, and features plenty of plot twists to keep you watching as the mystery unfolds. Damn, the French really can do it all!

8/10=Matinee!!

2000s, 8-8.5/10, Movies 2006, André Dussollier, Brigitte Catillon, Florence Thomassin, François Berléand, François Cluzet, Gilles Lellouche, Guillaume Canet, Jean Rochefort, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marie-Josée Croze, Marina Hands, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Nathalie Baye, Ne le Dis à Personne, Olivier Marchal, Philippe Lefebvre, Samir Guesmi, Tell No One, The Fugitive

Idiocracy (2006)

10 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on May 13, 2012

Believe it or not, this is the direction our world is headed. Just check out the trending topics on Twitter.

To test its top-secret Human Hibernation Project, the Pentagon picks the most average Americans it can find — an Army private (Luke Wilson) and a prostitute (Maya Rudolph) — and sends them to the year 2505 after a series of freak events. But when they arrive, they find a civilization so dumbed-down that they’re the smartest people around.

Sounds like Mike Judge doing a live-action adaptation of ‘Futurama’, but this time, with so many more stupid people. Maybe almost too stupid if I think about it. Hell I’m thinking about it and I’m turning stupid.

The one thing I like about Mike Judge is that his writing and comedic style comes from just being very simple. He doesn’t really try to do anything new or inventive with his comedy other than just give us something to laugh at, even if he and a couple of his other buds may only think it’s funny after about the 20th time they bring up the joke. This premise is definitely one of his first “high premise” comedies and it’s also one of his more ambitious flicks as of late too.

Where this film works is in its satire that takes over the whole film and how he shows the world as a completley and utterly stupid place to be in. He shows how the world will be watching TV shows like “Ow! My Balls!” and buying a drink with electrolytes in it, even though none of them even know what the hell electrolytes even are. It’s funny to see how much fun Judge pokes at this dystopian future that may seem very funny to make fun of now, but it’s also kind of sad because we can see that this is the direction our world is heading in. I don’t want to go out there and state that the world is going to be filled completley with idiots but we’re getting dumber and dumber as the years go by and it’s kind of surprising how Judge brings this point up better than anyone else ever could have. Yes, I’m talking about you Woody Allen.

The comedy for this film isn’t just all about satire though, it’s also just about being plainly stupid which can make and break a film. Whenever a comedy just wants to be stupid and silly, it totally works, but in the case with a flick like this, it can also get terribly annoying to the point of where it almost seems over-done. Yes, there are plenty of times where the stupidity of these characters and this future had me laughing but at the same time, I feel like Judge really hammered down the whole “stupidity” thing a little too far considering it’s almost every joke he makes in this film. Hey, I guess with a TV show like ‘Beavis & Butthead’, Judge is known world-wide for constantly repeating jokes until they’re dead in the water, but here, it became a little too much.

Another problem with this flick was that as much as the premise was really cool and held my interest, I couldn’t help but think it would have been used a lot better with a bigger budget and longer run-time. The film does get to do what it wants without ever really trying to shoot for the stars but the effects are really crappy and the story seems to start to run out of any creative steam by the last 20 minutes. I guess I can’t really blame Judge for the budget that he was given but I just wish that he did more with this flick and I wish it didn’t look like it was made on a DELL computer.

As for the cast, they are all pretty much pleasant enough to make this dumb film work and seem more realistic than it had any right to be. Luke Wilson is once again the most charming and likable dude to ever grace the screen with his performance as Joe Bowers; Maya Rudolph is fine as the prostitute/”artist”, Rita; Dax Shepard is border-line mentally-challenged with his performance here as Frito, and even though he’s very good at playing dumb, it’s no surprise that this is probably the best thing that this dick has ever done in his whole career; and Terry Crews is the man as President Camacho, aka the President that would kick Obama’s ass any day. Once again, nothing special from this cast but still pretty good considering what they were given with the loose script.

Consensus: Idiocracy may be a little too dumb and stupid for its own good, or bad, but where the film succeeds is in Judge’s satirical writing that makes this film funny, biting, and a little bit more realistic than it should be even though this is coming from the same dude who invented The Great Cornholio.

6/10=Rental!!

2000s, 6-6.5/10, Movies 2006, Anthony Campos, Beavis and Butthead, Bob Musgrave, David Herman, Dax Shepard, Futurama, Idiocracy, Kevin McAfee, Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Michael McCafferty, Mike Judge, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Sonny Castillo, Terry Crews, Twitter, Woody Allen

Casino Royale (2006)

10 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on May 8, 2012

Blond is always better.

James Bond (Daniel Craig)’s first 007 mission takes him to Madagascar where he is to spy on a terrorist, Mollaka (Sebastien Foucan). Not everything goes to plan and Bond decides to investigate, independently of MI6, in order to track down the rest of the terrorist cell. Following a lead to the Bahamas, he encounters Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) and his girlfriend, Solange (Caterina Murino).

This was the James Bond flick that brought back James Bond after about 4 years because honestly, even though ‘Die Another Day’ was one of the highest-grossing Bonds flicks at the time, it was still pretty lame. So Hollywood finally wised up and brought back the director of ‘Goldeneye’, Martin Campbell, and probably made one of the best decisions of their lives.

Campbell is the perfect director for James Bond, especially a reboot of his story, which means he can do whatever the hell he wants without any die-hard Bond fan crying about how they are ruining the name of Bond. There’s so much action, energy, and fun to be had here with a bunch of crazy set-pieces like when Bond and some dude go parkouring around a construction site, the terrorist attempt on the airport that reminded me a bit of the ending to ‘Liar Liar’, and also when Bond was fighting those two guys in the stairway. Everything Campbell does here is so much fun and filmed in the kind of way that we can actually tell what’s going on, but still feeling the tension and havoc that is being ensued. Campbell also somehow found a way to make a simple game of poker seem like the biggest win or die situation that I have ever seen. It’s a real wonder as to why this dude doesn’t do more action with a big budget because he can put it to some real good use.

When it comes to the story, it’s pretty standard fare but what I liked is how I didn’t quite know what was going to happen next. Yes, we all know that Bond usually lives at the end so he can give his famous last lines, but something with this flick made me feel different about that because he wasn’t just a guy that could kick insane amounts of ass but he was also a guy that could easily lose as well. This was cool to see in a story about James Bond considering it can get pretty predictable at a certain point but the story still worked for me and at least held my interest beneath all of the running, shooting, and killing.

My only gripe with this flick is that it feels too long by the end. The film is about 144 minutes long and you can start to feel it around that 2 hour mark and it gets even worse when the film continues to never end. It was almost like ‘The Never Ending Story’ of James Bond, it just kept on going and going and going until we were basically lost in the story-line and sort of felt like we had enough. However, Campbell does do a great job of keeping our minds off of that for the most part.

The main hype surrounding this flick was actually whether or not Daniel Craig, a relatively unknown indie actor at the time, was going to be able to be the part of James Bond and he practically got all of the nay-sayers to shut their mouths after this. What I like about Craig is that he always seem one step ahead of whoever he’s talking to and his role as Bond is no different because if you think about, Bond is always one step ahead of everybody else around him even though he’s terribly cocky. I have seen all of the Bonds that have came before Craig and they are all good but Craig brings a lot more that we didn’t expect from him such as making Bond seem more like a bad-ass rather than just the wizard of spy gadgets. Yes, Craig is the Blond Bond but he’s also one of the better Bonds of recent memory and I’m glad to see that he is still sticking with this role and can still go onto other flicks like ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and actually be looked at as an actor rather than just another Bond dude.

The rest of the cast is pretty out-standing too even though it is fairly knocked down to a couple of key roles. Mads Mikkelsen is pretty damn intimidating as Le Chiffre, and plays up that scary, freaky look to his advantage and definitely makes me feel like I should run away if I saw him across from me at a poker table; Eva Green is good as our new and improved Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, and she actually has a lot more depth to her rather than just being another one of the chicks that Bond bones and forgets about, she actually has something special about her and you can actually believe the relationship her and Bond have; and Judi Dench is always awesome as the cruel and sassy, M. Can’t say much else that hasn’t already been said of Ms. Dench.

Consensus: Casino Royale is by far one of the better Bond flicks with a star-making role from Daniel Craig, constant energy and action flying all about, and a new and improved look at Bond that we have yet to see from any other of the other films, which always works.

9/10=Full Price!!

2000s, 9-9.5/10, Movies 2006, Casino Royale, Caterina Murino, Daniel Craig, Die Another Day, Eva Green, Giancarlo Giannini, Goldeneye, James Bond, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench, Liar Liar, Mads Mikkelsen, Martin Campbell, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Pierce Brosnon, Roger Moore, Sean Connery, Sebastien Foucan, Simon Abkarian, The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Crank (2006)

14 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on April 24, 2012

It’s what it would be like for Forrest if he took coke before his big run.

The film centers on a British hitman in Los Angeles named Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) who is poisoned and must keep his adrenaline flowing constantly in order to keep himself alive, and in so doing causes mayhem, gets into fights with other gangsters, has altercations with the police and takes numerous drugs.

Take the basic concept of ‘Speed’ mix it up with a little bit of ‘Oldboy’ and throw in some ‘Falling Down’ for good measure, and there you have Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor directorial debuts. Sounds crazy, which it is.

This action film is pretty cool considering it has a concept that is used well and isn’t taken seriously one bit. The humor here ranges from deadpan, to tongue-in-cheek, and then surprisingly to dark material as we see some innocent bystanders get thrown into the deaths for good measure. There were moments where I actually found myself laughing at this flick and what it was doing, and I think the film was doing that along with me. The dialogue is definitely a lot snappier and cooler than we come to expect from our average action flick so we are spared the bad dialogue and attempt at character development, and instead we get blood, gore, and lots and lots of violence.

The action in this flick also works mainly because of the direction from these two dudes, who give the film this style that is actually one of the first to use this kind. These guys use a bunch of crazy techniques like the shaky-cam, to four-way split screens, and then to some graphics and special effects that you would see in video games, which all may take awhile to get used to after awhile but keep this film’s energetic and frenetic pace moving at a quick speed. It was also great to actually Quiet Riot and NOFX on a movie soundtrack, so that’s definitely a plus.

My only problem with this flick is that I feel like they kind of dropped the ball sometimes on their own premise. It seems like half-way through that these guys sort of forgot that Chelios had to keep on moving at a rapid pace in order to stay alive because there were plenty moments here when he would actually tries to slow things down and talk to the bad guys. This happens a numerous amount of times and I also just felt like they could have definitely done more of him ass-kicking people as well. I mean yeah, we get to see him shoot people but we never actually get to see a fist-fight every once and awhile but then again, maybe that’s just me being weird expecting more from a film called ‘Crank’.

Jason Statham definitely made this film work with his whole performance as Chelios because he’s the perfect kind of action star that can make you laugh your ass off at, but the next second he could totally scare the shit out of you by how scary and serious he can be. Statham has to do a lot of crazy things here like snorting and injecting just about everything in sight, running around the city half-naked, and even boning his girl in front of all of these Chinese people, and he makes it all work because he never seems to take himself too seriously here. Statham is the perfect fit for this kind of role and it was also even cooler to hear that he did his own stunts, which is always a bonus for me.

Amy Smart is playing that woman-in-peril act as Chelios’s girlfriend, Eve, but she’s good in this role because she actually adds a lot of sexiness to her role and her and Statham actually a have a nice little chemistry that seems playful but also very sexxed up. I wish the villains were a lot badder but then again, I don’t think it much mattered considering all I wanted to do was see Statham run around like a wild banshee, and that is exactly what I got.

Consensus: Crank may have some slow parts here and there, but its still a fun, energetic, and not-so serious thrill ride that knows what it is and isn’t trying to be anything else. Also helps that you have Jason Statham in your lead role too but then again, that’s always a given.

7/10=Rental!!

2000s, 7-7.5/10, Movies 2006, Amy Smart, Brian Taylor, Crank, Dwight Yoakam, Efren Ramirez, Falling Down, Forrest Gump, Jason Statham, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Mark Neveldine, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, NOFX, Oldboy, Quiet Riot, Robin Wilson, Speed

Little Children (2006)

5 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on February 19, 2012

A pedophile and a red-hot affair don’t really mix.

Two stay-at-home parents (Patrick Wilson and Kate Winslet) both end up striking affair after they both realize how bored they are with their own actual lives at home. Then another story happens where a convicted sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) moves back into his house and is soon harassed by almost every person he sees.

This is the sophomore effort from writer/director Todd Field, who some will remember from the big-smash he made back in 2001 with ‘In the Bedroom’. Somehow, he took that similar story mixed it with some ‘American Beauty’ satire and divided it with a hint of ‘The Woodsman’, then he got this crazy flick.

The film starts off very strong with these two immature parents who obviously don’t know what to do with their lives except just nag each other and hope that all their depression and angst goes away. I dug this beginning because the film showed these characters in a very interesting light while also focusing on the fact that it’s telling us that these adults are just like kids in some ways, they both forget the responsibilities they have in the world and they go with their gut-feeling rather than just using their heads.

A lot of people complained about the whole narrator from PBS thing so much that when I heard it in this film, I couldn’t say that I was too bothered. Yeah, he does spell out everything a little too much but there are times when his narration actually makes a lot of this moments in this film a lot more entertaining then they have any right to be. It seems as if he is reading a children’s story to us, like one of those audio-tapes you would get for a book if you didn’t know how to read, and it really divides the line between what’s funny and what’s sad in this film. I found myself laughing at some of the things that the narrator was saying, while others, I didn’t know how to feel.

The main problem that lies within this film is that it is very very messy because it constantly shifts back-and-forth between these two stories and they shouldn’t be in the same film together either really. There would be moments where the film would just focus on the suburbanites and their affair for a very long period of time, and then randomly go to the peddy without any real reason other than to show this dude who has obvious problems. Both stories are pretty interesting in their own rights but together, they can’t really share the same screen considering that after awhile the “affair story” becomes the same thing over-and-over again whereas the “pedophile story” becomes a lot more interesting as the time goes on. I think I would have rather watched two different films of these stories rather than just one because it wouldn’t have been so messy.

I do think Field as a writer is very talented but there are times where I think he loses himself with trying to be too smart, which I know is a weird thing to say but just bare with me peeps.. There are moments here when Wilson and Winslet are getting it on and Winslet will constantly ask him, “Is she pretty?”, she meaning his wife. She doesn’t only just ask this once but also many other times during whoopie and this to me seemed very unbelievable as some chick would just constantly ask the dude who’s mounting her about his own wife. There are also plenty of other moments where this film doesn’t feel all that realistic but not worth mentioning.

Everything with this film is all pretty messy until the last act, where the film really loses itself with the shock-o-riffic ending that seems more put-on than anything. I don’t want to give anything away really but I think Field tried a little too hard to convey these certain types of emotions for these characters to the point of where this ending came up, and it probably looked good on paper, but when it came to actually filming it up on the screen, it seemed very dumb.

The cast is very good though despite all of these other problems with the film. Kate Winslet is great as the conflicted house-wife, Sarah, and Patrick Wilson has never been more charming or conflicted as Brad. Jennifer Connelly is good as Brad’s wife, Kathy, but I wish there was more of her that gave more of her side on things. Granted, we get a scene here and there but I really did feel like her character could have done a lot more for this film if they included her just a little bit more considering Connelly is such a good actress as well.

The best out of the bunch though is probably Jackie Earle Haley as the pedophile who plays up that man-child act so well that it’s almost too hard to hate this guy when he’s being such a dirt-ball. I mean yeah, he’s a dirty dude that I would never have over for dinner around my kids but he’s also a very troubled soul that wants nothing more but to be accepted once again and feels the need to fit in, mainly because his mommy says so. Haley is great here and just by looking at him, you get the sense that this is a sad and tormented soul.

Consensus: Little Children has some good elements, such as its good acting and very strong beginning, but then starts to fall apart with being too repetitive, too unbelievable, and just by having two different stories that don’t really mesh all that well in the same film.

5/10=Rental!!

2000s, 5-5.5/10, Movies 2006, American Beauty, Catherine Wolf, Gregg Edelman, Helen Carey, In the Bedroom, Jackie Earle Haley, Jane Adams, Jennifer Connelly, Kate Winslet, Little Children, Mary B. McCann, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Noah Emmerich, Patrick Wilson, Phyllis Somerville, Raymond J. Barry, Sadie Goldstein, The Woodsman, Todd Field, Trini Alvarado, Ty Simpkins

The Last Kiss (2006)

12 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on January 25, 2012

Cheating, breaking up, making up: that’s the way love is sometimes. Or at least when you’re going through a mid-life crisis that is.

Thirtysomething couple Michael (Zach Braff) and Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) grapple with parenthood and other life-changing events. Instead of pushing him toward the altar, Jenna’s impending pregnancy has only made Michael feel more trapped. So when he meets flirtatious college student Kim (Rachel Bilson), he’s tempted to stray.

After the total success of the great film, ‘Garden State’, many people were trying to use Zach Braff in any way they could because thirty-somethings from all-over-the-world were in love with him. It’s not a real shame that this is what they ended up with, but they could have gotten something better.

The script written by Paul Haggis (‘Crash’) creates an honest look at modern relationships with all of the fun, love, and even heart-break that can sometimes occur during a relationship. I felt like a lot of what they were talking about here and how everything played out seemed very honest and realistic. Most of this is coming from a guy’s perspective as well but I still had to say that whenever a script comes around, that shows the way love really is, how it feels, and what it should be like, then it’s enough for me to appreciate it. This is why it’s such a real disappointment when things start to get a little hoaky by the end.

I can’t give too much away but somebody utters the words, “never give up” to Michael and this guy literally takes that piece of advice and uses it, which to some may seem sweet and totally romantic but to others like me (basically heartless assholes), this may seem a little cheesy and sort of against the whole film and what it was trying to at least go for. The ending is also stretched longer than it should have been and instead it took forever to get to the last shot, and even that was a disappointment by how it just ends. But then again, I don’t want to say what happened.

The film does have this very fun approach at the beginning, with all of these different characters doing their own thang, having fun, making jokes, and making sexy-time as well. This was good but it soon then begins to narrow down slowly but surely to just being about Michael and his little dilemma that he pops up into, while the other ones just totally disappear and have no real end, they are just gone from the picture completely. This was a bummer because there were plenty of other stories that had promise and they could have tried using to wrap-up real nicely at the end of the film but I never understood why they didn’t do that, instead of just ending with one story basically.

A lot of it seemed trimmed down to where director Tony Goldwyn can’t really do much other than just throw in a real cheesy montage and end the film, rather than actually have it actually impact anybody who’s watching. Although there are parts that certainly stand-out more than others, I was kind of bummed to see such a real talented and great cast sort of go to waste with a story-line that seems to bring the film down a bit by the end.

As messy as this film may sound, or at least how I make it sound, the cast is what really keeps this film moving and getting better and better by the second. Zach Braff uses his usual lazy charm that always seems to get a win for anybody who’s watching, even though he’s essentially playing the same dude in every film. Jacinda Barrett gets a real good role as his pregnant girly-friend, Jenna, and shows exactly why she is so amazing to have as someone who loves you and why Michael is such a dick for questioning in the first place. Rachel Bilson plays Kim, and I think the film was trying to make her the same kind of quirky character Natalie Portman was in ‘Garden State‘, which isn’t a bad thing because her performance is good but I could see where they were going with this character. Surprised that she can actually act though.

The ones here that I actually thought held their own the most was Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson as Jenna’s parents because their whole little love-life starts to fall-apart too, and this is what brings out the most in them. Danner is great as this very messed-up and very sad lady, who just can’t seem to get over the fact that she doesn’t get any lovings from her hubby. Tom Wilkinson is amazing with every scene he gets especially in the end, where he impacts not only the characters in the film but also the whole story as well.

Consensus: The Last Kiss has some great touches of honesty about love, life, and hitting a time in your life where you just don’t know what you want, but that all soon starts to fall down as the film gets a little hokey by the end and loses sight of all of its characters and rather just focuses on one.

6.5/10=Rental!!

2000s, 6-6.5/10, Movies 2006, Blythe Danner, Casey Affleck, David Haydn-Jones, Eric Christian Olsen, Garden State, Harold Ramis, Jacinda Barrett, Lauren Lee Smith, Marley Shelton, Michael Weston, Movie, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Movies, Natalie Portman, Paul Haggis, Rachel Bilson, The Last Kiss, Tom Wilkinson, Tony Goldwyn, Zach Braff

Sherrybaby (2006)

7 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on October 24, 2011

Jeez, this Gyllenhaal sure is messed up.

Newly released from prison, recovering addict Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal) struggles to normalize her life so she can be a good person and a trustworthy mother to her young daughter, Lexie (Ryan Simpkins). The stresses mount as she clashes with her sober housemates, disappoints a parole officer who’s growing impatient and faces old temptations, all the while her daughter grows attached to Sherry’s brother, Bobby (Brad William Henke).

The thing about Sherrybaby that works is just how the script shows you this menacing world we live in, where no matter how much we want to get past all of our problems and faults from the past, we always have to confront our consequences. It’s hard to get past such problems in life, and you sometimes need to rely on others to make everything better. The problem with life is that sometimes those people aren’t always there to make it better.

I liked this point that the film tried to get across but too many times did a lot of this feel just bleak, and nothing else really. I never really felt drawn into the actual story because too much of this just lagged on without any real meaning, just another moment of bleakness that so many of these kitchen-sink dramas have and show about so proudly.

There was also times when I feel like a lot of this story was under-developed when it shouldn’t have been. We have these little hints here and there that she was molested by her father, reasons for her drug-addiction, and why she exchanges sexual favors with almost anyone that offers her a job or opportunity to do something. I don’t understand as to why these points in the story weren’t brought up more because if you think about it, more development within this story could have added to so much more emotion and depth as well.

The reason why Sherrybaby is a not a bad film, and more mediocre, is because of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance as Sherry Swanson. Maggie is raw and totally convincing because she goes that extra mile to make her character seem like a real human-being, rather than just another cliched drug-addict. Sherry, as a character, is pretty loose, out-of-control, and very unpredictable as to what she might do or say next, but Maggie has us believe that she is in full control the whole time and makes everything out of what she’s given to do up on the screen. The rest of the cast is pretty good but compared to Gyllenhaal, there’s no real comparison.

Consensus: Sherrybaby lacks in a convincing and actually emotional weighty story, but the near-perfect performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal is what makes this film better and actually very watchable as depressing as it may get.

6/10=Rental!!

2000s, 6-6.5/10, Movies 2006, Brad William Henke, Danny Trejo, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sherrybaby

X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006)

20 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on September 15, 2011

This is where the mutants started to get annoying.

When scientists develop a miracle drug to treat unwanted mutations, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his heroic band of X-Men must battle a group of mutants known as the Brotherhood, led by Xavier’s former ally (Ian McKellen).

So after checking this whole series out, I’ve come to realize that Bryan Singer is awesome and Brett Ratner is stupid. Basically sums up this film pretty well.

The action is what really will hold you over this whole film, even though all of it looks like it was done for a video-game. There were a lot of cool special effects used here such as the Golden Gate Bridge being moved, a cool scene with a lake being turned inside out, and just about every single shot in the last 30 minutes. You get constant carnage left and right, and for the most part, it was good carnage and I could tell what was actually going on.

However, there’s not a real story here to keep me going. For some odd reason I felt bored for the first hour or so, just watching this story develop because nothing felt as meaningful or atmospheric as the first two did. I didn’t feel like Ratner really knew exactly what to do with all of these mutants and characters, so instead only focused on about two or three, and the rest were just sort of just shoved off to the side.

This one’s also a little bit more silly than the last two, which I didn’t really mind, but a lot of this just didn’t feel as genuine as Singer’s did. The screen-writers and directors took away what made the first two movies so good— the character story lines. The depth that the characters had in the first two movies was almost nowhere to be found in the third.

These interesting story lines were replaced by a movie completely full of “big booms”. Don’t get me wrong, I love a well filmed battle scene, they really help move a film along, but I don’t like it when they take the place of character plots. Ratner’s main problem is that he doesn’t know the difference between a glamorous action movie and a glamorous action movie with a well developed set of characters conforming to a great story, and sadly that plays out here.

The cast here is full of familiar faces such as Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Shawn Ashmore, and Anna Paquin. Plus there’s also some new faces with the likes of Kelsey Grammar (why?!?), Ben Foster, Vinnie Jones, and Ellen Page. Everybody here tries their best to their advantage but the script doesn’t even care if they are in this story or not and it doesn’t matter what they do with their lines, there all so cheesy and meant for the next big explosion.

Consensus: It may sound like I hate this film but I don’t. The problem with X3: The Last Stand is that it’s terribly weak compared to the first two because it’s more about the action, and less about the actual characters that inhabit this story. The action is good and the special effects will hold you over, but compared to Bryan Singer’s first two, this last installment is lame.

5/10=Rental!!

2000s, 5-5.5/10, Movies 2006, Anna Paquin, Ben Foster, Brett Ratner, Bryan Singer, Ellen Page, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammar, Movie Review, Movie Reviews, Patrick Stewart, Shawn Ashmore, Vinnie Jones, X-Men: The Last Stand

Children of Men (2006)

19 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on September 11, 2011

We need to start making babies now and quick!

In the year 2027, eighteen years since the last baby was born, disillusioned Theo (Clive Owen) becomes an unlikely champion of the human race when he is asked by his former lover (Julianne Moore) to escort a young pregnant woman out of the country as quickly as possible.

Director Alfonso Cuarón takes what we see in every apocalyptic film that Hollywood chunes out every year, and totally turning it on its side with a film that’s more reliant on its story and style rather than just the annoying special effects and action sequences.

Something that Cuarón does masterfully is these amazing tracking shots that almost last between 6 to 10 minutes, which may not seem like a lot at first, but once you start to think about it, you realize that in almost every action sequence, the camera has stayed the same and it feels like the whole time were just with these characters as they constantly move around. This all felt so realistic for me and worked so well because I love tracking shots and to see them used in a way that they have never been used before, really adds so much more of an innovative feel to it.

This is also some real bleak and depressing stuff here that actually seems reasonable as opposed to other apocalyptic films of this nature seeming way too far-fetched. There is just a certain type of depressed feel to this world we live in and it actually doesn’t look any different from what we see around us now, just tired and a lot darker. I liked this because this was one of the more believable near-future dystopian films that focuses more on the overall atmosphere rather than just what looks different and how.

You’ll also start to notice that Cuarón starts to bring out some great questions about racism, fertility, war, terrorism, technology, paranoia, and even life itself. Cuarón also makes a lot of slight references if not illusions to9/11 and even the Holocaust in a way because you see how everyone is treated, especially these immigrants, and you can’t help but think something just isn’t right about the way everything looks and you know that the looks and inspiration come from somewhere.

The only problem I actually had with this film was that I didn’t understand as to why women were all of a sudden infertile. It’s occasionally brought up every once and awhile but nothing here really stuck out as the real sole reason as to why ladies weren’t allowed to have babies. This problem may seem a bit minor but in sometimes the best dystopian films, they still at least go out of there to explain just why the main epidemic/problem happened, but here I kind of felt a bit cheated.

Clive Owen is amazing in this role as the rugged everyday paper-pusher, Theo Faron, who is basically hurled into an unthinkable situation and forced to confront almost every demon in his life. There are moments where Owen could have easily just cheesed this performance up but really he handles this role so well and keeps everything going even when nothing seems like it’s actually going on. If you also notice, as Owen is running through the war-torn countryside he never picks up a gun of any kind which I think says a lot about his character.

Julianne Moore is actually pretty good as Faron’s feisty wife and leader of The Fishes; Sir Michael Caine is also great as the hippie confidant, Jasper, who looks a lot like Meryl Streep with a beard but we have never seen Caine in this type of role and it really works; and Chiwetel Ejiofor works well too as another member of The Fishes, Luke. Claire-Hope Ashitey plays the pregnant girl Kee, but wasn’t that good and actually didn’t seem to confidant when it came to actually reading her lines but the rest of the film kind of hid this problem away.

Consensus: Children of Men may be a bit too dark and depressing for some viewers, but the future that director Alfonso Cuarón portrays is a dark, sad, and lonely time that he beautifully creates with great camera-work, compelling themes that add an extra layer to the story, and a couple of good performances from the cast, especially Clive Owen who has almost never been better.

9/10=Full Pricee!!

2000s, 9-9.5/10, Movies 2006, Alfonso Cuarón, Children of Men, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine

Rescue Dawn (2006)

8 Comments Posted by CMrok93 on September 4, 2011

If only George of the Jungle was here to save THE BATMAN!!

Renowned director Werner Herzog’s inspiring drama recounts the heroic saga of Dieter Dengler, a German-American fighter pilot and highly decorated Vietnam veteran whose reconnaissance plane was shot down in 1966. Captured by enemy forces and held in a Laotian torture camp near the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Dengler (portrayed by Christian Bale) defied death by organizing one of the most daring escapes in the Vietnam conflict.

I know how much everybody loves director Werner Herzog but I just haven’t ever really checked out any of his stuff before now. To say the least, he isn’t as great as everybody says he is but he’s still good.

Herzog knows how to make a very grueling and brutal story like this almost seem beautiful in his own poetic way. There’s a great deal of suspense here as a scene goes on, with the camera just slowly right behind the characters as the suspense gets larger and larger. I also liked how Herzog didn’t make this film about being a proud member of the U.S. army, and make it more about one man’s eternal struggle to survive and adapt to the environment that surrounds him.

My problem with this film was that nothing here really interested me other than the fact that this was a true story. A true story that I knew exactly how it was going to all pan out in the end. A large majority of the film felt like everything was a routine and didn’t have a natural feel and even though the suspense worked incredibly well at certain points, overall to me, this just felt like something I’ve seen before and didn’t have much of an effect on me as much as the film wanted it to.

Another problem with this film was the fact that all of the captors here just seemed like total idiots and goof-balls just for the sake so that we didn’t even get to know these bad guys one bit. The ringleader has hair down to his shoulders and glasses that look like they would be better used on Ray Charles’ face; another henchmen uses karate on the air randomly for no reason; and the most random of all, a grinning dwarf that seems totally oblivious to everything around him and is just put in the film because Herzog for some odd reason has a love for dwarfs.

Christian Bale here as Dieter Dengler is what really makes this film work and kept me watching the whole time. Bale does his trademark physical transformation that he has used many and many times before but the real power of his performance lies within his emotional transformation that feels so gripping. Bale just seems like a total mad-man when he is forced to adapt to his primal instincts and uses that rough and raw edge to his character that we all have seen before, but works so well right here.

Steve Zahn is also great in this role as Duane Martin. Zahn is always funny and great to watch in little comedic supporting roles but here he is so much more believable and still gives off that extreme likability we all know and love him for. The bond he and Bale create almost seems like a marriage, but that just adds so much more energy to this film. I mean somebody has to give this guy his own film soon! Jeremy Davies does that sort of annoying talk “really strangely act” he always does in everything, but he’s alright here as a Charles Manson look-alike.

Consensus: There is a lot to be on the edge of your seat about in Rescue Dawn but for some reason I just didn’t feel that connected to what was going on, most of it felt generic, and overall, Herzog doesn’t do anything really new that I haven’t seen before. However, the performances from Bale, Davies, and Zahn are what really make this a better film to watch.

6/10=Rental!!

2000s, 6-6.5/10, Movies 2006, Christian Bale, Jeremy Davies, Rescue Dawn, Steve Zahn, Werner Herzog

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Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

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Marie Antoinette (2006)

Lady in the Water (2006)

The Illusionist (2006)

Running With Scissors (2006)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Borat (2006)

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Halloween Horror Movie Month: Fido (2006)

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World Trade Center (2006)

Tell No One (2006)

Idiocracy (2006)

Casino Royale (2006)

Crank (2006)

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X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006)

Children of Men (2006)

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